The third DVD to emerge from Hop the Pond Productions is a bit shorter than the last mammoth offering...but for a hardcore Waters fan, it offers a dandy look at some of the goodies American Waters fans missed out on in 2002 as it includes the fun films (blown up to Mr. Sheet proportions) that US audiences did not get to see in 1999/2000.

The disc opens with an extremely professional animated menu....you choose your songs from bricks in a wall as hammers march around behind a gap in the wall. Going in setlist order, we are first treated to 'In the Flesh'...we're mostly in closeup on Roger, Chester Kamen, and the always well-dressed Snowy White until the end of the song, when we pull back to see Gerald Scarfe's marching hammers striding across Mr. Sheet, larger than life, bright, and flicker-free. This lends a bit of life to the song for those of us who got sick of hearing it between the 1999 and 2000 tours, 'Is There Anybody Out There ?', 'In the Flesh - Live', and The Wall Demos. Nice, although Waters does sing/speak most of it in a much lower register than normal (something that is fairly normal for rehearsals, from my understanding).

'Mother' consists entirely of closeups of the band, and doesn't have any remarkable differences from the 'In the Flesh' version. The same silly-looking "INFLATABLE MOTHER IN SPAAAAAAAAACE !" backdrop makes yet another appearance. 'Get Your Filthy Hands Off My Desert' and 'Southampton Dock' are much in the same vein, with one pull-out (to see...the same slide from the Berlin show as in 1999/2000. Oh well). Things look up once we get to 'Pigs on the Wing (Part 1)' however...the stale, static backdrop of the 'Animals' cover is replaced by nice swooping shots of the floating pig bouncing around Battersea Power Station. It looks smiliar to the video on the "Anthology" series, but cleaner and more nicely edited.

Then we come to what's usually the highlight of the first set, 'Dogs'. Nothing new from 'In the Flesh' in the visual department, sadly, and Chester just can't sing the part as well as Jon Carin here. On the other hand, he does play the solos much better here than in some of the actual 2002 shows and gives us an angry guitar face or two. Roger pulls his "I'll chant/say/sing the lyrics low" bit again, and looks a little befuddled. Then comes what was, for me, the unexpected highlight of this video, 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun'. Musically speaking, it's every bit as dark and sinister here as on the previous two legs of the In the Flesh Tour, but the visuals have been ramped up a bit....instead of the occasional oil slide and still frames from old Floyd promos, we get the film from 'The Scarecrow' slowed way down (and displayed in a strange "three-windowed" format reminiscent of 1984/85's big slot machine) projected on the screen and overlaid with gurgling oil slides. This may not sound so great here, but it lends a strange bit of dark atmosphere to the song that works absolutely beautifully.

For reasons unknown to me, 'Time' fades in with a bit of Ian Eames' animation, ripped from 'Delicate Sound of Thunder'. I dig the thing big time, but it is a big question mark. After a bit of a false start by Graham Broad on the rototoms, we launch into a close-in-all-the-way performance of the song. The static record player (adorned with, what else, 'Dark Side of the Moon') slide from 2000 finally starts spinning during the intro to 'Money'...mostly in closeup, we zoom out every now and then to see bits of the original circular film for the song projected onto the LP. Sounds a bit weird, but it is a nice way to display an otherwise all-too-familiar film and keep Mr. Sheet filled up. The first half of 'Perfect Sense' is a bit uninteresting, despite Roger blabbering about how the lights should spill on the screen. Oh, and the monkey's TV has moving images on it this time. Yay. The second half picks up a little, following Roger all over the stage, as he looks at his feet in deep concentration, strolls around the stage pointing at stuff here and there to mark cues, sipping from his "WORLD'S GREATEST ALLEGEDLY-EGOMANICAL BASSIST/SONGWRITER" mug, and halfheartedly doing his "I'm looking in a periscope, me" routine as he counts off Marv Albert's running commentary with two fingers. Something about it strikes me as funny and I'm not sure why...maybe it's the deeply thoughtful look on his face the whole time, I dunno.

'The Bravery of Being Out of Range' is pretty much the same as the 'In the Flesh - Live' rendition with moving images (nearly all recycled 'Radio K.A.O.S' backing film seen on the KAOS video EP) added to the TV screen for a little variety. This same treatment is given to 'Amused to Death' as a game show host or preacher or someone strolls about on the monkey's television in the beginning. We see Chester bobbing back and forth a bit with the music, and then Alf Razzell appears in the upper right-hand corner at the end of the song, giving his tear-jerking end-of-album speech. Good stuff made slightly better. Unfortunately, the addition of film projectors wasn't enough to bring back the film for 'Brain Damage / Eclipse' film, and we get the same old ruined buildings slide we got for two years. This slide and Roger's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame quote appear to have become unhealthy obsessions the last few years. This means something.

Anyway, we finally get to see Roger's son Harry stroll out to add some rythm guitar to 'Comfortably Numb' and bob from side to side with Roger as father and son (see also : Roger and Andy Fairweather-Low's bobbing-about in 'Welcome to the Machine' on 'In the Flesh'), and the usual dueling-guitars outro (better than 1999, not quite as good as 2000) which lacks anything visually but spotlights. Oh, you get some more Berlin 1990 pictures on Mr. Sheet during the verses, but that's it. 'The Flickering Flame', our final song and encore, is a bit of an anticlimax. Panning between Roger and Chester (contributing some nice slide work) the entire time with the occasional look at the 'tree in a field in front of a sunrise' backdrop slide, it's not as dull to watch as it is to listen to (though it comes close).

Hidden elsewhere on the disc are two short bits (wherein we prowl around a bit pre-rehearsal and Chester breaks a string) that shouldn't be real hard to find. Okay, now that we're done with the blow-by-blow, onto some other details. The sound on this disc is as good as it gets for amateur video (lack of an audience helped quite a bit, naturally) and I can find nothing wrong with it. The video is, as on the other Hop the Pond releases, clear as a bell and vibrant to look at. The camerawork isn't as steady as the Gilmour shows and occasionally slides into epilepsy-cam mode (very briefly and not very often though), but this is perfectly understandable. A bit harder to shoot illegitimate video here than from a balcony concealed by other audience members. Overall, however, the video quality is great.

Now for the cons, of which there are few. This is obviously not a full show, missing what is in my opinion the highlight of the 2002 shows (the two halves of 'Shine On' and 'Welcome to the Machine') among a couple of other tracks that may or may not have been visually improved.....but hell, I'll take 17 out of 25 tracks over nothing any day, especially when it's this clear. The only huge hurdle on this disc is the menu system. There is no option to just watch the whole thing straight through, as every song you choose dumps you back to the menu at the end, where you have to pick the next song. While extremely professional and well-done, it gets a bit tedious having to navigate through the menu so often. When all is said and done however, this is one of the finest solo Waters products (well, unofficial product anyway) available...if you're a big fan of the man or his visuals, it's worth getting. Not terribly revealing (as opposed to the 1980, 1987, and 1990 rehearsals), but 90% of the time a joy to watch.

'In the Flesh'	'Pigs on the Wing (Part 1)'
'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun'	Pre-Show Running Around